D2baU 

^" 1908 No. 10 

THE 

JOHNS HOPKINS 
UNIVERSITY CIRCULAR 



Daniel Coit Gilman 

1831-1908 



Baltimore, Maryland 

pxjblished by the university 

Issued Monthly from October to July 

December, 1908 



[New Series, 1908, No. 10] 
[Whole Number 211] 



Entered, October 21, 1903, at Baltimore, Md., aa second class matter, under 
Act of Congress of JiUy 16, 1894. 




DANIEL COIT OILMAN 



Daniel Coit Gilman 



FIRST President of the Johns Hopkins university 

1876-1901 




BALTIMOEE 

The Johns Hopkins Press 

1908 



V 






e 






THE 

JOHNS HOPKINS 

UNIVERSITY CIRCULAR 

New Series, 1908, No. 10 DECEMBER, 1908 Whole Number, 211 



IN MEMORIAM 

Daniel Coit Gilman 

1831-1908 



On Sunday afternoon, November 8, 1908, at 4 o'clock, 
an audience consisting of the Trustees, Faculty, Alumni, 
and Students of the University, and friends of Dr. Gil- 
man, the first President, assembled in McCoy Hall to do 
honor to his memory. The order of the exercises was as 
follows : 

SCRIPTURE READING AND PRAYERS 
The Reverend ARTHUR B. KINSOLVING, D. D. 

RECTOR OF ST. PAUL'S CHURCH 

''Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made Heaven 
and earth."— Ps. 124: 8. 

"Lord thou hast been our refuge from one generation 
to another. Before the mountains were brought forth, 
or ever the earth and the world were made : Thou art God 
from everlasting and world without end." — Ps. 90: 1, 2. 

3 



4 Daniel Coit Gilman [1120 

"I know that my Kedeemer liveth, and that he shall 
stand at the latter day upon the earth : and though after 
my skin worms destroy this body, yet from my flesh I 
shall see God : 

"Whom I shall see for myself, 

"And mine eyes shall behold, and not another." — Jol) 
19 : 25, 26, 27. 

"The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and 
there shall no trial touch them. 

"In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and 
their departure is taken for misery, 

"And their going from us to be utter destruction, but 
they are in peace." — Wisdom 3 : 1, 2, 3. 

"They that put their trust in Him shall understand the 
truth: and such as be faithful in love shall abide with 
Him : for grace and mercy is to His saints and He hath 
care for his elect." — Wisdom 3 : 9, 

"The righteous live for evermore; their reward also is 
with the Lord, and the care of them is with the most 
high. 

"Therefore shall they receive a beautiful crown from 
the Lord's hand; for with His right hand shall he cover 
them, and with His arm shall he protect them." — 
Wisdom 5 : 15, 16. 

"I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth 
in me though he were dead, yet shall he live : and whoso- 
ever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." — 8t. 
John 11 : 25, 26. 

"For we know that if the earthly house of our taber- 
nacle be dissolved, we have a building from God, an house 
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." — II Cor. 
5: 1. 

"And they shall see His face; and His name shall be in 
their foreheads * * * 

"They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; 
neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For 
the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed 



1121] Devotional Exercises 5 

them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters; 
and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." — 
Rev. 22 : 4 ; 7 : 16, 17. 



Minister: The Lord be with you. 

Answer: And with thy spirit. 

Minister: Let us pray. 

Our Father, who art in Heaven, Hallowed be Thy 
name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, 
as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. 
And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who 
trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; 
but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and 
the power and glory for ever and ever. Amen. 

"O God, whose days are without end, and whose 
mercies cannot be numbered; make us, we beseech Thee, 
deeply sensible of the shortness and uncertainty of 
human life; and let Thy Holy Spirit lead us in holiness 
and righteousness, all the days of our lives: That, when 
we shall have served Thee in our generation, we may be 
gathered unto our fathers, having the testimony of a good 
conscience; in the communion of the Catholic Church; in 
the confidence of a certain faith ; in the comfort of a rea- 
sonable, religious, and holy hope ; in favor with Thee our 
God, and in perfect charity with the world. All which 
we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

"O God, at whose word man goeth forth unto his work 
and to his labor until the evening; who art the fountain 
of all wisdom and the true light which lighteth every man 
that Cometh into the world ; we beseech Thee regard with 
Thy favor and blessing all the schools and colleges of 
our land, and especially this University. Assist all who 
are guardians of its interests. Give increasingly the 
spirit of wisdom to its officers and teachers : enlarge the 
number of its friends and benefactors, and reward them 
with Thy mercy for whatever good in its behalf they may 



6 Daniel Coit Oilman [1122 

design or do. Enlighten the minds, purify the hearts, 
and exalt the ideals of those who are students here. 
Inspire them with high hopes and worthy purposes, and 
so prepare them to fulfil their duty in this life that they 
may attain the destiny to which Thou dost call us in 
the life to come. Through, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. 

"Almighty and ever-living God, we yield unto Thee 
most high praise and hearty thanks, for the wonderful 
grace and virtue declared in all Thy saints and leaders 
and founders who have been the choice vessels of Thy 
grace, and the lights of the world in their several genera- 
tions; most humbly beseeching Thee to give us grace so 
to follow the example of their steadfastness in Thy faith, 
and obedience to Thy holy commandments, that at the 
day of the general resurrection, we, with all those who 
are of the mystical body of Thy Son, may be set on His 
right hand, and hear that his most joyful voice: Come, 
ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared 
for you from the foundation of the world. Grant this, 
Father, for Jesus Christ's sake, our only Mediator and 
Advocate. Amen. 

''0 Lord, support us all the day long of this troublous 
life, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, 
and the busy world is hushed and the fever of life is over, 
and our work is done. Then, of Thy great mercy, grant 
us a safe lodging and a holy rest, and peace at the last; 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." 



1123] President Remscn's Address 7 

ADDRESS 

IRA REMSEN, PH. D., LL. D. 
PRESIDENT OF THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 

We have come together, friends, colleagues, students, 
co-workers in many lines of activity', to give some expres- 
sion of our respect and admiration for one who for more 
than a quarter of a century was the chief factor in the 
life of this University. No single life can mean as much 
for us as that of Daniel Coit Oilman. And yet it is 
diflScult for one who during that long period worked by 
his side, who knew much of his hopes, his aspirations, and 
his trials, to give adequate expression to the thoughts 
that press forward for recognition. Those of us who 
had the privilege of working under his leadership would, 
it is certain, testify with one voice that the conditions 
created by him were well-nigh ideal. His motto was "Do 
your best work." The effect these words produced upon 
those of us who came here at the beginning will never be 
forgotten. We were not hampered by a lot of rules, but 
were simply asked to do our work in the way that seemed 
best. What better can anyone have? If there ever was 
a place where the simple intellectual life was fostered, it 
was at the Johns Hopkins University in the early years. 
We were all free to work out our own intellectual salva- 
tion. If our leader had been meddlesome, narrow- 
minded, unsympathetic, without tact, and dictatorial, 
our work could not have flourished. He was, in fact, 
broad-minded to a remarkable degree; he was sym- 
pathetic; he had confidence in those whom he had 
brought together ; he had tact ; and was gentle even when 
harsh treatment appeared to be justified, as was some- 
times the case. He created an atmosphere good to live 
in — an atmosphere salutary and stimulating. Whatever 
success has attended the efforts of those who have carried 
on the work of the University, is to be traced back to this 
clear, invigorating atmosphere. 



8 Daniel Coit Gilman [1124 

Mr. Gilman was a model administrator. By pre- 
cept and example he impressed upon us that our 
object was to build up a University that should be 
useful to the community, to the State, to the Nation 
if possible. He told the trustees at his first inter- 
view with them that he had no desire to take part 
in the founding of a new college in the ordinary sense. 
He did not feel that there was great need for another 
institution of that kind, but his ambition was fired when 
he was given free rein to work upon the problem of a 
university as something differing from and supplement- 
ing the college. Now, the name university had been used 
in this country up to that time to designate institutions 
of learning of a great variety of grades. Even to-day it 
conveys far from a clear idea of the character of the 
institution to which it is applied. But there has been 
improvement in thirty years, and there is a well-defined 
tendency to apply the name university only to those 
institutions of learning that provide more or less ade- 
quately for special courses suited to the needs of gradu- 
ates of the colleges, who wish to proceed to the study of 
specialties. In 1876, the year of the opening of the Joihns 
Hopkins University, graduate courses, as these advanced 
courses are generally called, were offered in only a few 
colleges and even in them the opportunities were most 
inadequate. And yet that there was a demand for such 
courses was shown by the fact that for years large num- 
bers of graduates of our colleges went to Germany to find 
opportunity for this advanced work. Mr. Gilman's 
central thought was to provide for these graduate 
students. The trustees were in full sympathy with 
his views, and those who were called to work with 
him' were eager to take part. Students came in larger 
numbers than we expected, and we soon found it difficult 
to accommodate them. The experiment was succeeding. 
It was necessary to provide for the ever-increasing body 
of students that came to us, and thus the Johns Hopkins 



1125] President hemsen's Address 9 

University became firmly established in the heart of the 
city, whether the authorities would or not. 

The main point to be kept in mind in this connection 
is, however, that the experiment was succeeding, and 
the further fact that the success was due to the admir- 
able combination of qualities possessed by Mr. Gilman. 

He was forty-four years old when elected to the presi- 
dency. That he had made a strong impression on the 
leaders in the educational world of that day is strikingly 
shown by the fact that, when the trustees asked five 
of these leaders to recommend to them a man capable 
of organizing and conducting the new university on a 
high plane, all five, independently of one another, recom- 
mended Daniel Coit Gilman. He was accordingly chosen, 
and the world knows the result. 

It is given to few to realize their hopes to the extent 
that Mr. Gilman did. The conception of a university in 
his mind became a reality in the Johns Hopkins Univer- 
sity, and indeed the conception has been realized in a half- 
dozen or more of the universities of this country that have 
followed the lead of the Johns Hopkins University in 
establishing graduate courses. The problem of working 
out a definition of a university is in a fair way to a solu- 
tion, and the name is not likely to be as lavishly bestowed 
in the future as in the past. 

There are fair-weather leaders who in stormy times 
fail. Our leader was sorely tested by storms. The time 
came when the very existence of the University was 
threatened. No one, not directly involved, can form a 
clear idea of the conditions that we lived under after it 
was learned that our income was most seriously im- 
paired. The work could not go on without an adequate 
income. Just as the work was beginning to tell came 
the disaster. Had our leader flinched, we should have 
lost our courage and the Johns Hopkins University would 
probably have been a failure. But now some of his best 
traits came into play. He would not let the members of 



10 Daniel Coit Gilman [1126 

his staff become discouraged. The work must go on. 
We must find a way. There must be no change of plan. 
There must be no lowering of standards. And, though 
there were months and years of anxiety, the work did 
go on in spite of the somewhat dismal outlook. There 
has never been any serious change of plan, and to-day 
the Johns Hopkins University stands for all it stood for 
in its formative period, and it stands for more, for, 
thanks to the efforts of Mr. Gilman and others-, its 
fortunes have to a large extent been restored and the 
work has broadened as the necessar}^ funds have been 
provided. We cannot forget that he carried us through 
the period of storm and stress, new qualities that were 
not called for at the beginning being brought into play. 
One word more. For reasons that did not seem to his 
colleagues adequate, he decided most unexpectedly to 
withdraw from the presidency of the University, when 
he reached the age of seventy. The thought that another 
could possibly be the president of this University seemed 
to many of us almost preposterous. But here again he 
showed new and admirable qualities. His cordial wel- 
come to his successor, his gentle judgment, his apprecia- 
tion of whiatever appeared to mark a forward movement, 
his rejoicing in the welfare of the University, helped to 
make easy what might have been a most difficult path. 
His withdrawal from the service was complete. If his 
successor ventured occasionally to consult him on some 
knotty problem, his answer was invariably "I am out of 
it, I cannot help you" : and that answer was prompted 
solely by a refined sense of the relations between himself 
and the questioner. It was not due to any lack of friend- 
liness, for, if anything, the bond of friendship grew 
stronger in these latter years. 



President Remsen then read extracts from letters 
received by him from His Eminence, Cardinal Gibbons; 



1127] Commemorative Minute 11 

Hon. Andrew D. White, formerly President of Cornell 
University; President Angell, of the University of Michi- 
gan; Dr. S. Weir Mitchell; Hon. Seth Low; President 
Alderman, of the University of Virginia. (See page 36.) 



MINUTE 
Read by Judge HENRY D. HARLAN 

PRESIDENT OF THE TRUSTEES OF THE HOSPITAL AND A MEMBER 
OF THE UNIVERSITY BOARD 

The Trustees of the Johns Hopkins University and of 
the Johns Hopkins Hospital, the members of the philo- 
sophical and of the medical faculties, the students, grad- 
uate and undergraduate, many alumni and friends of the 
University, assembled to give expression to their com- 
mon sorrow in view of the removal by death of their 
honored and beloved friend, Daniel Coit Gilman, record 
hereby their painful sense of loss, and their profound 
and abiding respect, gratitude, and afifection. 

The extraordinary services rendered to this institu- 
tion, and to the interests of higher education in this 
country, during the twenty-five years' administration of 
its first President, have received universal acknowledg- 
ment. We recall with admiration the sagacity with 
which he discerned the opportunity awaiting the new 
foundation under the conditions then existing, the con- 
structive skill with which he devised plans suitable to 
these conditions, and the steadfastness and courage with 
which he adhered to these plans under whatever tempta- 
tion to diverge from them. 

We appreciate the inestimable value, at this formative 
period, of certain personal qualities possessed by Mr. 
Gilman in an unusual degree. A sound and discriminat- 
ing judgment in respect to men; wide and varied 
intellectual tastes, interests, and sympathies; resource- 
fulness of suggestion in practical things; high-minded- 
ness, generosity, loyalty — how conspicuously these rare 



12 Daniel Coit Gilman [1128 

endowments of nature and character were employed, in 
the wise selection of teachers for the leading chairs of 
instruction ; in the adjustment of the respective claims 
of the various departments of learning; in the tactful, 
orderly, efficient conduct of business; in the elimination 
from the common life of petty motives and ignoble per- 
sonal differences: all this is abundantly known to those 
familiar with the history of the past years. 

Those who served as teachers under Mr. Oilman's 
presidency remember with keen pleasure the relations of 
confidence and kindness which he always maintained 
with them. Quick to commend anything that deserved 
commendation ; scrupulous in his regard for individual 
feelings and rights; conceding all reasonable liberty of 
opinion and action; capable of understanding and of 
making allowance for exceptional gifts; under no stress 
of occupation or anxiety, betrayed into petulance, or 
injustice, or discourtesy; employing rarely the language 
of authority, assuming rather the attitude of co-opera- 
tion and comradeship; rejoicing in the successful work 
or the well-won honor of one of his colleagues — to use the 
word which he always applied to those subordinate to 
him — as heartily as though the work or the reward had 
been his own ; in time of trouble the tenderest and most 
sympathizing of friends: — it is no wonder that these 
admirable and delightful traits secured for President 
Gilman, from the beginning to the end, the united and 
enthusiastic support of his faculty, and enabled him to 
secure from them a kind of service to the University 
which cannot be commanded and which cannot be 
bought. 

The relations of the president of a university to the 
students under his care are, in our day, less immediate 
and personal than w^as the case a generation ago. The 
demands upon time and thought, from within and from 
without, are so constant and so exacting that he is 
deprived of that means of influence which the great col- 



1129] Commemorative 3Iinute 13 

lege presidents of the past made so potent — the inter- 
course of teacher with pupil. In our leading institutions 
the president is necessarily an administrator rather than 
a teacher. The larger conception of the presidential 
office appealed strongly to Mr. Gilman. He did not de- 
sire to withdraw into impersonal isolation. He often 
addressed the students, more or less formally, upon edu- 
cational, literary, or practical themes. He made himself 
accessible to them during his working hours, and enter- 
tained them hospitably at his home. For many years 
he took personal charge of the daily religious service. 
Never did he lose sight of the responsibility of an institu- 
tion for the development of character, in those subjected 
to its influence, as well as for the communication of 
knowledge. 

Epoch-making as was the work of Mr. Gilman in educa- 
tional linesi in the development of the Johns Hopkins 
University, his services in a wholly different field of 
activity, in the organization, equipment, and opening of 
the Johns Hopkins Hospital, are no less worthy of men- 
tion. Called by an unexpected train of events to under- 
take this novel task, he formulated for this Hospital a 
system of medical and surgical attendance and adminis- 
tration with unusual features, which has continued in 
force for nearly twenty years. He selected the heads of 
important departments, established a training school for 
nurses, and inaugurated systematic medical teaching in 
the Hospital prior to the establishment of the medical 
department of the University. He also devised the sub- 
division and departmental independence of important 
branches of internal administration in the Hospital, and 
their effective co-ordination through a single executive 
head responsible for the work of all branches — a system 
which remains unchanged to-day. 

Later, upon the establishment of the medical depart- 
ment of the University, he beheld the full realization of 



14 Daniel Coit Gilman [1130 

far-seeing plans formed at the time he came to Baltimore. 
So wisely were they originally made thiat they required 
no changes, and after the lapse of many years he had the 
satisfaction of seeing them brought to fruition in an 
institution which has powerfully influenced medical 
teaching throughout the country. During the remainder 
of his life he continued in close relation with the Medical 
School and the Hospital, and his constant interest and 
frequent presence were ever an inspiration to officers, 
teachers, and students. 

It may be safely said that no one of us has known a 
more public-spirited citizen, a more devoted supporter of 
every good cause, one more ready to expend labor and 
accept sacrifice for the sake of the higher interests of 
society. In him appeared — to quote language which 
Lord Morley applies to John Stuart Mill — ''that com- 
bination of an ardent interest in human improvement 
with a reasoned attention to the law of its conditions 
which alone deserves to be honored with the high name 
of wisdom." Mr. Gilman was indifferent to nothing 
which has to do with human welfare. He was an atten- 
tive and serious student of the problems which press so 
insistently upon philanthropists and reformers — prob- 
lems of poverty and crime and disease ; he was constantly 
in search of better methods in education, in the adminis- 
tration of government, in the ordering of municipal life; 
he had an enlightened interest in many subjects less 
directly connected with immediate utility — geographical 
exploration, archaeological research, biographical and 
historical inquiry. It was he who first called the atten- 
tion of the citizens of Baltimore to the movement for 
associated charities, bringing about the formation in this 
city of the Charity Organization Society. It was he who 
preserved from extinction the Mercantile Library. He 
served as a member of the Board of School Commis- 
sioners, and as one of the Commission which framed the 



1131] Contmenhorative Minute 15 

present charter of the city of Baltimore. As a trustee 
of the Peabody Institute, of the Pratt Library, of the 
Samuel Ready School, as one of the council of the 
Municipal Art Society, he showed his readiness to take 
part in all efforts for the betterment of the community 
in which he lived. For many years he was actively con- 
cerned v/ith the work of Southern education, as one of 
the trustees of the Peabody Education Fund and of the 
Slater Fund for the Education of the Freedraen. He 
was long the president of the American Oriental Society. 
During recent years he was the president of the Ameri- 
can Bible Society. He succeeded the Hon. Carl Schurz 
in the presidency of the National Civil Service Reform 
League. By invitation of the President of the United 
States, he served as a member of the Venezuelan Com- 
mission in 1896-7. He was a member of the General 
Education Board, and one of the trustees of the Russell 
Sage Foundation. On his retirement from this Univer- 
sity he became the first president of the Carnegie Institu- 
tion — thus called for the second time in his life to the 
arduous task of leadership in an unexplored field. This 
incomplete enumeration of the undertakings in which he 
co-operated, and of the interests which he labored to 
promote, bears impressive testimony to his alert intelli- 
gence and to the catholicity of his social feelings. 

Our grief at the removal from the earthly scene of a 
friend so honored and cherished, and our well-nigh over- 
whelming sense of the loss inflicted upon many a worthy 
cause in the withdrawal from the ranks of its supporters 
of so vital and forceful a personality, are tempered and 
assuaged when we consider how perfectly in accord with 
what he would himself have desired was the manner of 
his departure. The life which had traversed so wide a 
circuit of labor and duty returned to the home of its 
youth, and, laden with honors, with unabated energy of 
mind, without pain, in the serenity of the religious faith 



16 Daniel doit Gilman [1132 

which had been its mainstay through the long years, 
passed into the life immortal. 

"that force, 
Surely, has' not been left vain! 
Somewhere, surely, afar. 
In the sounding labor-house vast 
Of being, is practised that strength. 
Zealous, beneficent, firm." 



ADDRESS 

R. BRENT KEYSER, ESQ. 

PRESIDENT OF THE TRUSTEES OF THE UNIVERSITY 

When we read of men erecting monuments to them- 
selves, we are apt to think of pyramids and temples and 
shafts of stone, forgetting that there are monuments 
which are of the intellect and of the spirit, even more 
enduring and more impressive. And, as in all times, men 
have stood before these monuments of stone to gather 
inspiration from the examples of those who erected them, 
so, in this day, do men gather to admire the example of 
those whose deeds and works remain with us in the 
intangible but impressive evidence of the spirit. 

Of all the many such monuments created by Mr. Gil- 
man, in the varied interests to which he gave his energies, 
the Johns Hopkins University stands greatest, and may 
best be called his life-work. It is therefore most proper 
that the Trustees of this University should pay their trib- 
ute of admiration, and it is my privilege to bring to you 
this afternoon their testimony. 

When Johns Hopkins died, he not only left to the Trus- 
tees of his University the care of its physical well-being, 
but he imposed upon them the much more important func- 
tion of giving to the earthly body which he had provided, 
a spiritual and intellectual character that should be to 
that earthly body what the inherited instincts and spirit- 
ual yearnings are to the child. He charged them with 



1133] Mr. Eeyser's Address 17 

providing what we may, with all reverence, call its soul, 
without which the physical body would be a useless shell, 
and the great benefaction would fail of its obligation to 
humanity. It is due to those first Trustees, chosen by Mr. 
Hopkins, that we are gathered here this afternoon to do 
honor to the memory of the man, whom they in their 
wisdom chose to be the first President. It was because 
of their high ideals that Mr. Oilman came among us, and 
brought to this community his unselfish devotion and his 
untiring energy, and it seems proper that their names 
should be mentioned in this gathering. In speaking for 
the Board of Trustees, I feel that Mr. Gilman would wish 
me to mention those, his early friends and comrades in 
the great work of his life, that they may, in memory, be 
present with us this afternoon. Those first Trustees were 
Galloway Cheston, Francis T. King, Lewis N. Hopkins, 
Thomas M. Smith, William Hopkins, John W. Garrett, 
George W. Dobbin, George Wm. Brown, James Carey 
Thomas, Charles J. M. Gwinn, Eeverdy Johnson, Jr., and 
Francis White, — now all gone to that further land. 

In May, 1875, Mr. Gilman began his work as first Presi- 
dent of the Johns Hopkins University, being then not yet 
forty-four years of age, and on February the 22nd, 1876, at 
its first public gathering, he made his Inaugural Address. 
In this address were first published to the world, the ideals, 
the characteristics, the spiritual and intellectual attrib- 
utes of the infant university. Up to that time it had 
possessed earthly attributes; from thence on it became a 
living, spiritual influence. What that influence was to 
be, can best be judged from Mr. Oilman's own words. 

The new university was *'to develop character — to 
make men." Its purport was ''not so much to impart 
knowledge to the pupils as to whet the appetite, exhibit 
methods, develop powers, strengthen judgment, and invig- 
orate the intellectual and moral forces ; to prepare for the 
service of society a class of students who will be wise, 



18 Daniel Coit Gilman [1134 

thoughtful, progressive guides in whatever department of 
work or thought they may be engaged ; to impart a knowl- 
edge of principles, rather than of methods." 

It was to stand for the doctrine that "religion claims 
to interpret the word of God, and science to reveal the 
laws of God;" that "the interpreters may blunder, but 
truths are immutable, eternal, and never in conflict." He 
chose as the motto of the University "The truth shall 
make you free." 

He laid out a plan, capable of indefinite expansion 
and based upon the fundamental principles of human 
progress — a plan, which, after a third of a century, is 
to-day as pertinent, as vital, as the day it was first con- 
ceived. Across some of the items we can write "begun 
and well continued," but across no one of them can we 
write "accomplished," for plans based on eternal prin- 
ciples are eternal. Methods and conceptions and knowl- 
edge may change, buildings rise and decay, teachers and 
students add their quota of interpretation and pass on, 
but the work, the real work, of a real university is never 
completed — and so he planned it. 

The University was to be, in similitude, a shipyard 
where ideas and methods and influences are built with 
much toil, and, when ready for use, are launched out to do 
their part in the commerce of mankind, and when one is 
launched, the space it occupied in the building is imme- 
diately utilized to lay the keel for a new and larger craft, 
embodying the experience of all that has gone before, 
together with the new ideas since the last was planned. 

It was therefore a matter of vital import that the Uni- 
versity should be established along lines which would bear 
this test of eternal truth. 

That the lofty standard established for the University 
was in a very great degree due to the personal character 
and influence of Mr. Gilman, may be seen if we consider 
how completely the ideals which he conceived for the 



1135] Mr. Key set'' s Address 19 

institution correspond to the purposes that swayed his 
own life. 

In this same Inaugural Address, speaking of the world- 
wide discussion regarding the aims, methods, deficiencies, 
and possibilities of education, then engaging the atten- 
tion of thoughtful men, he asks, "What is the significance 
of all this activity?" And he answers thus: ''It is a 
reaching out for a better state of society than now exists ; 
it is a dim but an indelible impression of the value of 
learning; it is a craving for intellectual and moral growth ; 
it is a longing to interpret the laws of creation ; it means 
a wish for less misery among the poor, less ignorance in 
the schools, less bigotry in the temple, less suffering in the 
hospital, less fraud in business, less folly in politics; it 
means more study of nature, more love of art, more les- 
sons from history, more security in property, more health 
in cities, more virtue in the country, more wisdom in leg- 
islation, more intelligence, more happiness, more reli- 
gion." To satisfy this cry of humanity was the labor of 
love which he set for the youthful University. 

Did he not set the same task for himself? Let us con- 
sider these words of his, not as a plan of life for the Uni- 
versity, but as a plan of life for himself. Consider his 
services to humanity, as known to us all, and see if the 
spiritual and intellectual character which he gave to this 
University was not part of his very self. Is it not true, 
then, that he erected a monument, not of brick and 
mortar, not of stone or marble, but of spirit — the spirit 
which was in him. And is it not meet that we should 
bring tribute — we, who both oflicially and personally 
may learn from him, not by precei^t alone, but also by 
example, how to attain to the motto of the wise men of 
old: 

"Let us learn on Earth those things the knowledge of 
which will remain in Heaven." 



20 Dmiiel Coit Gilman [1136 



ADDRESS 
HENRY M. HURD, M. D., LL. D. 

SUPERINTENDENT OF THE JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL 

I desire to speak briefly in behalf of the Board of 
Trustees of the Johns Hopkins Hospital in regard to 
President Gilman's connection with that institution. 
Although the connection seemed fortuitous and almost 
accidental, it was fraught with benefits to the Hospital 
and prepared the way for intimate relations with the 
Medical School when it was later established. When in 
the winter of 1888-9 the Hospital, after twelve years of 
preparation, was approaching completion, there was on 
the part of the Trustees much uncertainty as to the best 
method of organizing the work and putting the institu- 
tion into active operation. The President of the Board 
of Trustees, the late Francis T. King, who had been 
selected by Johns Hopkins to supervise the erection of 
the Hospital, and who had been wisely and sagaciously 
interested in the project, found himself unequal to the 
task of opening it for patients by reason of ill-health; and 
advancing years. It was felt by all that the undertaking 
was of no ordinary proportions and called for the assist- 
ance of a skilled and wise organizer. One night as Mr. 
King lay sleepless and perplexed over the question of a 
proper person to undertake the work, the conviction sud- 
denly came to him that President Gilman must do it. 
Later in my acquaintance, Mr. King often spoke of the 
relief which he felt when, shortly after, at his suggestion, 
the Trustees in January, 1889, formally appointed Mr. 
Gilman Director of the Hospital, and committed to him 
the task of providing the Hospital with "a system," as 
had been expressed in the report of one of the commit- 
tees — "a system which should serve as a guide to other 
institutions." He entered upon his new duties imme- 
diately with his usual ardor and energy. He familiar- 



3137] Dr. Eurd's Address 21 

ized himself with the literature of the subject and corre- 
sponded with experts both at home and abroad. He 
visited hospitals and large hotels in other cities to see 
their methods and details of management, and studied 
their kitchens, laundries, and linen-rooms. He inspected 
even such minor matters as table linen and napkins. Out 
of all this personal work he evolved a system of organ- 
ization which has served excellently well ever since. I 
saw a very suggestive diagram a few days ago in which 
he portrayed visually, so that every one might clearly 
understand, the relations of trustees, chief executive 
officer, heads of departments, and employes. He assisted 
in the selection of medical officers ; he saw personally and 
selected and recommended for appointment all subordi- 
nate officers and defined their duties and responsibilities ; 
he familiarized himself with the proper spheres of the 
housekeeper, the purveyor and the superintendent of 
nurses, and "set their bounds," and thus secured har- 
mony and co-operation. He thus spent several very 
active months until the whole machinery of the establish- 
ment was put in motion upon the opening day in May, 
1889 — and a well-ordered and inspiring day it was! He 
remained thereafter in daily attendance for many weeks 
and gave close attention to every detail of administra- 
tion. I have in my possession several notices of routine 
appointments written for the bulletin board in his own 
clear and legible hand. He came often to the Hospital 
before breakfast, and on occasion spent a night there, 
and this, too, when burdened with University duties. To 
him we owe a system of internal administration with 
many novel features, which, as has been mentioned in 
the minute just read, have continued unchanged until 
now. I need not repeat what has been already so clearly 
stated. 

His kindness of heart and keen sympathy with the poor 
and friendless led him to modify many stringent regula- 
tions then generally in force in other hospitals as to Sun- 



22 Daniel Colt Gilman [1138 

day visiting. Feeling that the laboring man could ill 
afford to lose time from his labor during the week day to 
visit a member of his family sick in the hospital, he 
arranged from the first for a visiting hour on Sunday. 
Likewise, impressed with his observation that Sunday 
was a long and lonely day for people far from home, he 
arranged that the mail should always be sent after on 
that day, that the sick might be cheered by news from 
home. 

He was interested in employes of every grade and left 
an impress of kindness, consideration, and courtesy upon 
all branches of Hospital service. He selected very wisely 
the first principal of the Training School for Nurses and 
the first head nurses. He was ever after much interested 
in the Training School and often visited it, and on sev- 
eral occasions made addresses to the pupil nurses. To 
his suggestion the Johns Hopkins Hospital owes the pos- 
session of the reproduction of Thorwaldsen's statue of 
Christ, the gift of Mr. Spence, of Baltimore, which adorns 
our rotunda and suggests rest and healing to sick and 
suffering. He suggested a system of publications on the 
part of the Hospital and watched the successive issues of 
the Bulletin and Reports with kindly critical interest. 
He kept himself constantly in touch with the work of the 
institution, and, if in hours of discouragement I sought 
his advice, he was ever hopeful and optimistic. ''Look at 
the results," he would say, "they are grand." 

He remained on terms of intimate friendship with all 
of his former associates at the Hospital, and his influence 
was always given to educational and administrative bet- 
terment. He was never a carping critic, but rather a 
devoted, interested friend. When his brief connection 
with the Hospital was at an end, he left behind him tradi- 
tions of system and order, of a kindly spirit and true 
courtesy in his relations with ofiScers, nurses, patients, 
and employes, of an appreciation of honest, faithful work 
and of high faith in the future usefulness of the institu 



1139] Mr. Bryce's Address 23 

tion. He was gifted with imagination to conceive the 
possibilities of its future and a practical sense which had 
enabled him to realize his dreams. Above all he left with 
the Hospital an abiding spirit of enthusiasm for scien- 
tific study, of loyalty to the higher aims of medicine, and 
of cordial co-operation in every department of service. 

He was the steadfast friend and trusted adviser of 
each and all; and we loved and honored him. No better 
illustration could be given of his enduring personality, 
versatility, and practical judgment than his successful 
work at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. It will live for 
many years. 



ADDRESS 

Right honorable JAMES BRYCE 

BRITISH AMBASSADOR 

I value this opportunity of joining in paying a 
tribute — nor was any tribute ever better deserved — to 
the memory of President Gilman. I desire to pay it as 
a member of two ancient Universities in Great Britain, 
to one who will hold always a leading place in the history 
of universities, and, also, especially because I had the 
privilege of knowing Mr. Gilman during a period of 
thirty-eight years. 

It always struck me that there was a singular fitness 
in his being chosen to be the first President of this Uni- 
versity, whose creation and equipment marked a new 
departure in the history of the higher education in 
America. 

There are no posts in this country which a European 
observer finds more important than are the headships of the 
great universities. It was said a few moments ago that the 
President of a university has no longer the same oppor- 
tunities as he once had, of coming into intimate personal 
relationship with the students placed in his charge. But, 



24 Daniel Coit Gilman [1140 

on the other hand, in the development which your univer- 
sities have taken, there is opened a wide and still expand- 
ing field through which he can mold the character of thou- 
sands of your future leaders in Church and State, who 
are placed under his charge, and I doubt if there be any 
position in the United States which offers greater oppor- 
tunities for rendering the finest kind of service to the 
nation as a whole. We had the other day an illustration 
of the importance which belongs to that post in the im- 
pression which has been made upon the whole country by 
the news of the approaching retirement, after a career of 
splendid usefulness, of the head of the most ancient uni- 
versity in America, Dr. Eliot, of Harvard University. 

Tributes have been paid to President Oilman's work 
by those who knew him here in intimate personal rela- 
tionship, who were associated with him, as his successor 
has been, in the work of the University and of the Hos- 
pital, and on behalf of the Trustees also. All that I can 
say is from an outside point of view, which far less 
touches the details of work in which administrative 
talents are shown, and what I do say I offer with defer- 
ence. And yet it is quite fitting that there should be 
words spoken by those also who saw the University and 
the city from outside, and who looked at your President 
in the wider aspects of his career. 

There were two things that always impressed me in his 
personality as qualifying him for the special work which 
he had in this University, and particularly for the work 
that fell to him of determining the lines upon which this 
new seat of learning ought to be developed. One of 
these was his being in close touch with very different 
lines of study and inquiry. He was in touch with the 
sciences of Nature. He was capable on the one hand of 
comprehending and appreciating true scientific methods, 
not those only which belong to abstract inquiry, but also 
the application of our knowledge of Nature to enterprises 
of practical utility. And, on the other hand, he was 



1141] Mr. Bryce's Address 25 

equally in touch with what we call the human studies — 
literature, history, political science, economic science. 
He understood the part to be allotted to them also, and 
he felt that they were no less essential to the equipment 
of a truly great university. No man was better fitted 
to adjust the relations of these two great divisions of 
knowledge to one another in the organization of a seat of 
learning. Then further he had also a true and just per- 
ception of the relation that ought to exist in the plans 
and organization of a university to secure due attention 
to each of the two branches of its work, viz., to Research 
and to Instruction. Appreciating the importance of both 
of these, he made due provision for each; nor has any- 
thing more contributed to the progress of this Univer- 
sity. We in England have been much perplexed by this 
problem, which his wide and just view of the history and 
functions of a university enabled him to solve effectively. 
As the creation of Johns Hopkins has been a very 
important factor in the recent growth and change in the 
character of the higher instruction in this country, his 
sound appreciation of the conditions of this problem 
deserves the fullest recognition. 

He had large plans and high ideals, seeing a long way 
ahead. But one was always struck by this also, that his 
sense of the ideal and his striving for the ideal never 
made him unpractical or dreamy. His mind was steadily 
fixed on what could be done with the means that lay at 
his disposal. It was, moreover, a singularly fair and open 
mind, a mind which was not warped by prejudices or 
prepossessions, so, when he had to judge men and select 
some one for a ptost, he was able to weigh and sum up the 
various merits of different persons and their fitness for 
the work which they were to be chosen to do in the Uni- 
versity, just as carefully and just as reasonably as he 
would weigh against one another the respective claims 
of mathematics, of biology, of Latin or German, to a 
place in the curriculum. 



26 Daniel Coit Gilman [1142 

This, too, was conspicuous throughout his action, that 
he was always thinking first of his duties, not of himself, 
and that he was far more anxious that the work should be 
done well than that he should have any credit for the 
doing of it. Many were the talks I had with him, not only 
about the organization of universities, but also about the 
Constitution and politics of your country, and I was 
impressed by the open mind and the conscientious spirit 
which he brought to the consideration of all those 
questions. 

He was assuredly in the best sense of the word a good 
citizen, a good patriot, a good American. He loved 
his country so much as to .wish that everything in it 
should be made worthy of the finest traditions of our race 
and of the special opportunities which lie before the 
American people. 

Visible throughout his daily life and work there was a 
quiet serenity, a sort of unobtrusively persistent earnest- 
ness which largely contributed to the effectiveness of 
bis actions. He never seemed to be in a hurry. He never 
allowed the petty annoyances of life to disturb him. 
Was it not by this serenity of disposition and tranquil 
steadfastness that he achieved such great results without 
impairing his own strength? 

Wisdom grows out of the temper and heart of a man 
as well as out of his intellect. Where there is practical 
work and delicate work to be done, insight and sym- 
pathy must go together. They were happily united in 
him; and to their union in its first President your 
University largely owes the high position which it so 
soon took and which I trust it will long retain among 
American seats of learning. 

This is an occasion rather for the commemoration of 
public service than for reference to the gifts and graces 
which make the charm of private life. But I may be 
permitted to say that Dr. Gilman was one of the most 
true and constant and warm-hearted of friends. He was 



1143] Professor Welch's Address 27 

one of those friends in whose company it was good to be, 
for he was always set upon high things, and he followed 
them in a considerate and pure spirit. He was simple, 
kindh^, tender. He was one who always gave the best of 
himself to his friends. 



ADDRESS 

WILLIAM H. WELCH, M. D., LL. D. 
PROFESSOR OF PATHOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY 

As one of the noblest, most distinctive, and most suc- 
cessful parts of the work of this University has been that 
of the medical department, it is eminently fitting that 
there should be on this occasion especial recognition of 
Mr. Gilman's great achievement in this field, and 1 
esteemi it a privilege, in behalf of my colleagues of the 
medical school, to express our sense of deep indebtedness 
to him. 

It was ordained by the terms of Johns Hopkins' gift 
that there should be a medical department of the Univer- 
sity, and that the hospital for which he provided should 
be a part thereof. The task thus imposed was one movst 
congenial to Mr. Gilman. He had already been actively 
interested Avith others at the Sheffield Scientific School in 
arranging a course of study designed to be preliminary 
to the study of medicine, this being the first provision of a 
special course of this kind. The address of Professor 
Huxley at the opening of the University in 1876 was 
largely concerned with the subject of medical education. 

The establishment of the chair of biology at the begin- 
ning of the work of the University had especially in view 
the needs of the future medical school and prepared the 
way for its successful foundation. The choice of Newell 
Martin as the first professor of biology proved to be 
most fortunate and of great significance for the develop- 
ment in this country of biology in relation to medicine. 



28 Daniel Coit GUman [1144 

At the time and under the conditions then existing Mr. 
Gilman, by securing the establishment of this chair and 
the appointment of Professor Martin to fill it, manifested 
great wisdom and foresight and did the best possible 
service to the future school of medicine. 

In the interval between the opening of the University 
and that of the Hospital in 1889, and of the medical 
school in 1893, Mr. Gilman gave much time and thought 
to questions of medical education and the character of the 
future department. He brought to this study the most 
enlightened, sympathetic, and active interest. He secured 
the opinions and advice of eminent authorities in this 
country and in Europe. He was himself greatly inter- 
ested and well-informed regarding the newer develop- 
ments of medicine in the fields opened to exploration by 
Pasteur and Koch, and he realized that medicine was en- 
tering upon new paths of knowledge and of service to 
mankind. He was particularly attracted by the life and 
work of Pasteur. 

Early in the history of the University Mr. Gilman con- 
stituted the nucleus of a medical faculty by bringing to- 
gether for deliberation upon certain questions relating to 
the contemplated medical school Professor, now President, 
Remsen, Professor Martin, and Dr. Billings, and in 1884 
T was summoned to join in these deliberations. It was 
realized from the start that there was an opportunity for 
the University to achieve for higher medical education 
a work quite comparable in character to that which it was 
accomplishing for university education in general. It 
was this ideal which animated Mr. Gilman in all his 
efforts in behalf of the medical school. The attainment 
of this ideal of a medical school upon a true university 
basis, under the administration and largely through the 
efforts of Mr. Gilman, is of historic importance, and will 
be remembered as one of his greatest achievements in the 
cause of higher education. 



1145] Professor Welch's Address 29 

When, by the generous provision of a special endow- 
ment, it was possible to open the medical school in 1893, 
Mr. Gilman brought to us the same qualities of leadership 
which had served the University so well since its founda- 
tion, the same wisdom in the selection of the staff, the 
same sagacity in counsel, the same power of organization, 
the same inspiring optimism, the same high ideals of at- 
tainment. He established with the heads of the various 
departments those close, personal and sympathetic rela- 
tions which were always an encouragement and stimulus 
to the best work. He rejoiced exceedingly in any good 
work or any distinction of any member of the staff, and 
half the pleasure of any such success was to share it with 
our president. 

I should like here to refer to the great interest which 
Mr. Gilman had in the work of Major Walter Reed and 
his colleagues of the army yellow fever commission, and 
to the important service which he rendered in organizing 
the Walter Reed Memorial Association and accepting the 
chairmanship. It was principally through his efforts that 
the fund was raised to commemorate the work of Walter 
Reed and his colleagues in discovering the mode of con- 
veyance of yellow fever, and thereby making possible the 
control of this dread pestilence. 

I have endeavored in these few words to indicate in 
some measure, although very inadequately, the profound 
indebtedness of the Johns Hopkins Medical School to Mr. 
Gilman, but I cannot express that personal debt which 
we, his colleagues, as he was accustomed to call us, owe 
to him. We loved him as a friend, we revered him as our 
leader and wise counsellor, we shall cherish his memory 
as an inspiration, and this will remain a precious posses- 
sion of the medical school throughout its existence. 



30 Daniel Coit Gilman [1146 

ADDRESS 

HONORABLE CHARLES J. BONAPARTE 

ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES 

A really great teacher deals, not with books, but with 
men; his labors bear fruit, not in the expanded learning 
of those who have known his care, but in their strength- 
ened principles, their purified lives, their added useful- 
ness to other men and to themselves. It is well and of 
moment that he train up scholars, for on scholarship 
rests civilization ; but it is better and of far greater 
moment that he train up good citizens and good men, for 
civilization withjout righteousness is but armed iniquity 
and gilded nastiness. 

And to do this, to fulfil this paramount, this vital duty 
of his profession, the teacher must be himself a good citi- 
zen and a good man ; he will teach better by his life than 
by his word or pen ; a learned recluse may give to the 
world greater knowledge; in our day, at least, he cannot 
give the world higher and stronger manhood. 

These truths shine forth in the life and the life-work 
of that great teacher to whose memory we pay just 
honor to-day. He was a stranger to no wise movement 
for public betterment in our city, and a worker, nay a 
leader, in many among those of wider scope. He was a 
founder of the Charity Organization Society, of the 
Civil Service Eeform Association of Maryland, of the 
Baltimore Reform League, of the Municipal Art Society, 
of the New Mercantile Library; in our midst he aided to 
administer such trusts of enlightened beneficence as the 
Peabody Institute, the Enoch Pratt Free Library, and 
the Samuel Ready Orphan School; he served the people 
of Baltimore as a member of our New Charter Commis- 
sion and as a Commissioner of our Public Schools. 

Beyond the borders of Maryland, he was President of 
the American Oriental Society, of the American Bible 



1147] 3Ir. Bonaparte's Address 31 

Society, of the Slater Fund to educate the Freedmen, of 
the Carnegie Institution at Washington, and of the Na- 
tional Civil Service Reform League; he was Vice-Presi- 
dent of the Peabody Southern Education Fund and of the 
Archaeological Institute of America; he was a Trustee 
of the General Board to promote Education throughout 
our Union, and of the Russell Sage Foundation to im- 
prove conditions of work and life among our people. Bj 
the wise choice of President Cleveland he aided in en- 
lightening the foreign policy of our country, in safe- 
guarding the peace of the world, through service as a 
member of the Venezuela Border Commission. 

This numbering of his good works leaves a multitude 
without mention: the life lately closed was so full of 
fruitful and unselfish labor, so rich in blessings to his 
fellow-men, that it were easier to say what he did not 
than what he did to benefit the community wherein he 
dwelt, his country, and mankind. A youth seeking learn- 
ing from this University finds depicted in the life of its 
first President the model of what he and his fellows must 
be to do credit to their Alma Mater and to merit honor 
from good men. Such may be his most fitting monu- 
ment: every young man who enters life, equipped within 
these walls to bear its burdens and fulfil its duties, and 
who proves himself worthy of the dignity and happiness 
of an American freeman, will be a legacy to his country 
from him who has just left us, will be a reminder to his 
countrymen of their debt to Daniel Coit Oilman. 



32 Daniel Coit Gilman [1148 

ADDRESS 

BASIL L. GILDERSLEEVE, PH. D., LL. D. 

PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY 

In the many tributes already paid to the revered and 
beloved first President of the Johns Hopkins University 
the old-fashioned functionary known to foreign universi- 
ties now as the Public Orator, now as the Professor of 
Eloquence, would find ample material for a formal 
address on this memorable occasion. To the crowning 
achievement of his life, to the organization of this school, 
by which; men date a new era in the history of American 
education, converged as to a centre all the lines of his 
earlier activities. It was for this in the Providence of 
God that he was imbued with the noble traditions of a 
great college, that he was brought into contact with the 
scientific and social life of Europe, that he made himself 
familiar with the work of the librarian, that he mastered 
the system of public education, that he discharged the 
active duties of a professorship, that he planned the 
machinery of a great scientific school, that he served as 
the head of a great university. The preparation for the 
supreme task of his life was as elaborate as his personal 
endowments were rare; and from the centre thus gained 
there went forth a radiation of beneficent influences that 
were felt in every part of the community and the coun- 
try. It was the glory of the Johns Hopkins University 
that its President was foremost in every good word and 
work. It was no fountain sealed — it was a source of life 
and light. Such was the central sphere, such the ever 
enlarging cycles of his philanthropic endeavor; and so 
effective was his work that he seemed to be the one great 
• champion of each cause that he espoused. Wherever he 
appeared there came light and hope and confidence. His 
wide vision was matched by his discernment of spirits 
which is the secret of power, his marvellous resourceful- 
ness by his wonderful sense of order. There have been 



1149] Professor Gildersleeve's Address 33 

many to tell of these things, of his untiring energy, of his 
unfailing courtesy, which was the effluence of a sympathy 
unfeigned, his large and gracious hospitality, his inex- 
haustible generosity, which not only responded to every 
appeal for help, but even divined the needs of those who 
hid their trouble as if it were a treasure. His native 
dignity had no touch of austerity. His presence was a 
bright presence and a pure presence. There are few who 
like him have not sinned with their lips under the temp- 
tation of the infectious mirth of the social circle. High 
qualities all these — but they are marred in some men by 
a self-seeking spirit which regards all praise of others 
as an encroachment on vested rights. No man so utterly 
free as was he from envy and jealousy. He rejoiced in 
the successes of his followers more than in his own. He 
delighted to espy the first recognition of a member of his 
academic stalf, to get the first appreciative newspaper 
clipping, to secure the first copy of a new book by one of 
his men in advance of the author himself. If recognition 
was slow in coming to one of his associates, its value was 
enhanced when it came by the eagerness with which he 
tried to make good the long arrears. Chief trait of all 
was his faith in his high calling — the faith that led him 
to triumph, that sustained him under trial. Optimism 
men call it. He was known as an optimist. And so he 
was in the best sense. He lived as looking forward to 
the best, as hoping for the best, as seeing Him who is 
invisible. All these things have been brought out with 
varying stress, now in unstudied interview, now in 
formal resolution, by those who have undertaken to 
speak his praise, to tell of their love and reverence. But 
to say again what others have said and said better than 
I could say it — that is not the office to which I have been 
called to-day. I have been asked to speak because to me 
the man, Daniel Coit Gilman, was not a mere synonym 
for an array of high achievements, an assemblage of high 
qualities, a treasury of noble thoughts, a source of happy 



34 Daniel Coit Gilnicm [1150 

influences. He was much more to me than all that, and 
though others of his colleagues were nearer to him than I, 
still there are circumstances in our common history that 
would make it recreancy in me not to respond to the re- 
quest that I should undertake to represent the thought, 
the judgment, the feelings of those who shared his work 
and followed his standard. 

I am the oldest, if not the earliest of his Baltimore fel- 
low-workers now living. For twenty-five years, a consid- 
erable stretch in the longest life — a period that sufQces 
for the true mission of most men — for twenty-five years, 
for more than twenty-five years, we were friends in coun- 
cil, and he often playfully referred to the early days of the 
University when he and I constituted the faculty. Those 
days soon passed, but the memory of them is precious to 
the survivor, and at a time when each man is talking to 
his neighbor of the common loss and recalling this incident 
and that, to illustrate the character and the career of the 
departed master, I may be forgiven for bringing forth my 
treasured remembrance of the hour when we first met in 
my old academic home, and when, all unsuspected by me, 
he was taking my measure for the office I was destined to 
fill, my treasured remembrance of the long consultation 
in Washington when he invited me to share his work, and, 
contrary to his wont, for he kept early hours, pursued 
until the night waxed old, the high theme of the Univer- 
sity that was to be. Together we journeyed in the cause 
of the University, in which the founder himself had made 
provision for my native South — to Staunton, to 
Richmond, to Raleigh. But time would fail me to 
tell the story of that early fellowship, or even to 
touch on the salient points of those far-off days. 
''The old favor sleeps" is the plaint of a Greek 
poet, but I am happy to think that with him the 
old favor never slept or slumbered, and in my last inter- 
view with him just thirty-three years— just a genera- 



1151] Professor Gilder sleeve's Address 35 

tion — after he sought me out at the University of Vir- 
ginia, we could look back on all that long period of un- 
broken friendship and unforfeited confidence, — and when 
I go over in my mind the details of that last interview, I 
cannot help thinking that his never-failing benignity 
had in it something of the tenderness of a last farewell. 
No wonder that I have dreaded for years lest this hour 
should come to me, that I had hoped he should be the one 
to say the little that was to be said about his fellow- 
worker and his follower, and that I should not have to 
face the impossible task of summing up his achievements, 
of portraying his character. You see, my friends, I 
cannot even at this time dissociate my private loss from 
the public loss, nor can I suppress the personal note in 
this public tribute. My plea must be that my relations 
to him have their counterpart in the experience of all 
those who were privileged to work under the first Head 
of the University — and hateful as the first person always 
is — I find that I cannot better illustrate than by my own 
example the potent influence of the great administrator, 
or rather let me say the great Taskmaster. It is indeed 
a homely word, but it is one he himself would not have 
disapproved, he who lived as ever in his great Task- 
master's eye. No Egyptian taskmaster was he with 
cruel criticism and meddlesome interference; no unwise 
taskmaster to burden himself with the assumption of 
duties which he had assigned to others. 

There were two men of genius in the little band the 
first President first gathered about him. Now the wind 
of genius bloweth where it listeth and no one dreams of 
setting a task to men like Sylvester and Rowland, yet 
they, too, were ministers to his far-reaching plans; and 
momentous as the work of these men was in itself, its 
effectiveness was due in large measure to the infinite tact 
of the man who guided the fortunes of the University. 
Few men would have been large-minded enough to appre- 



36 . Daniel Coit Oilman [1152 

ciate the value of those idealists — few men would have 
known how to make a plain path before them. 

And now I go on to make my confession as to his deal- 
ings with another of his staff, with his only close con- 
temporary in that first company. No man considers 
himself a problem, for every man fancies that he knows 
himself. But looking backward it seems to me that T, 
too, must have been a. problem. With twenty years 
behind me of familiarity with university work, in which 
questions of administration as well as problems of in- 
struction were always coming up, with all the spirit of 
independence bred by the conditions of my nativity, by 
the atmosphere of my only academic home, a man of his 
own age and so not overawed by the old experience of 
another — I might have given trouble to a man less famil- 
iar with the stops of human will. And yet while I was 
free as air in the conduct of the special work I was 
appointed to do, I have been so swayed by what I once 
called his mild but fatal insistence that I have engaged 
in lines of effort that were foreign to my habits and my 
inclinations, and much that I have accomplished from 
my entrance upon the work of the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity down to this day has been due to his initiative. 
He knew that we were children of the same creed, he 
knew that we had both been trained to respond to the call 
of the stern daughter of the voice of God — to obey the 
mandate "This is the way. Walk ye in it." 

And so it came about that a man who was radically 
un-American in his aversion to public performance, who 
in twenty years had only four or five public discourses 
to his account — was called on over and over again in the 
early years of the University to represent by formal 
addresses and popular lectures the spirit of the new insti- 
tution; and, if for many years I have seldom figured in 
that capacity, it has been because he found other work 
for me to do, work for which he deemed me better fitted, 
though it was work for which, I must confess, I had little 



1153] Professor Gildersleeve' s Address 37 

relish. That editorial work involved self-abnegation, it 
meant a subordination of personal ambition to the pro- 
motion of the interests of American scholarship, it meant 
resigning at least in a measure the delightful, if arduous 
exercise of constructive activity. It was after all follow- 
ing in his footsteps and subscribing to his faith in the 
power of the press— for he was a believer in the power 
of the press, and the Johns Hopkins Press, which he 
founded in the face of criticism, will hold the University 
to its high mission and maintain the University in its high 
repute, whether the worshippers at the academic shrine 
be few or many. 

And so it was that he revealed to me, as he revealed to 
so many, the path of duty, and after walking in it with 
steady if not eager feet all these years I have publicly 
acknowledged my obligation to him and publicly con- 
fessed that I could not have been more usefully employed. 
My recompense of reward is his recompense of reward and 
the circumstances are not unlike. For he also was too 
much of a student not to regret that in his busy life he 
had not found time to set his seal to some supreme 
achievement in letters or science. But it must have been 
a consolation to him— nay, I am sure it was a consolation 
to him— to know how many of the successes of his follow- 
ers bore the impress of his administrative genius. And it 
is only as one of many that I have attempted to show 
how he energized as well as organized the Johns Hopkins 
University, only as one of many that I bear this testimony 
to our great Taskmaster. No testimony is needed, none 
would suffice for those who knew him as a friend. 



The audience then arose and sang the Doxology, and 
the exercises closed with a brief prayer and the benedic- 
tion by Professor Edward H. Griffin, Dean of the Col- 
lege Faculty. 



38 Daniel Goit Gilman [1154 



LETTERS RECEIVED BY PRESIDENT REUSE N 



CARDINAL GIBBONS 



I take pleasure in saying . . . that I have always 
admired Dr. Gilman. He was a splendid type of the 
public-spirited citizen. Our city had no more ardent and 
efficient worker for its material and intellectual progress. 
There was no movement inaugurated for the city's 
improvement which did not receive not only his approval, 
but also his whole-souled support and active co-operation. 
But above and beyond all other works which have 
stamped the name of Dr. Gilman upon the affectionate 
memory of the citizens of Baltimore, which have merited 
their gratitude, and which we can point to with especial 
pride, stands pre-eminent the great university which he 
established and over which he presided so admirably and 
so long. 



HONORABLE ANDREW D. WHITE 

I need not tell you how fully earned the tribute is 
which you purpose to pay to Dr. Gilman. He has deserved 
well, indeed, not only of Baltimore and of Maryland, but 
of the whole United States. The republic of science and 
letters throughout the world also owes him a great debt. 

I have known him well ever since we were fellow 
students at Yale, fifty-five years ago, and I have never 
known a day during that whole period when his thoughts 
were not upon some enterprise for the good of his fellow- 
men. 

What he did at Johns Hopkins was a work of genius. 
We all knew him before as an admirable worker in 
various fields, but I think that none but his most intimate 
friends realized, until he founded your institution, the 
real originality of that mind which was destined to render 



1155] Letters Received 39 

such vast services to the higher education in our own 
country and in others. It has been my good fortune at 
various times to labor with him in various enterprises, 
and to be thrown into very close and confidential relations 
with him, and I can say that in every capacity in which 
I have ever seen him tried, he has proved himself a master. 

Eecognition of his merit was far wider than it at first 
might seem, and it is to me not only a pleasure but a duty 
to testify that the welcome he received from the foremost 
men of science and literature in Berlin, when he visited 
that capital and university preparatory to taking charge 
of the Carnegie Institution, was very striking. I had pre- 
viously had occasion to know of the deep impression his 
personality and ideas made at Oxford and Cambridge in 
England, and it was with especial satisfaction that I saw 
such recognition coming from other sources, equally high, 
but less inclined to admire American university achieve- 
ments. The realization of his ideas in Baltimore, even 
though not yet complete, has marked an epoch in the 
history of civilization in our country. 

I might dwell upon the personal characteristics 
revealed in this intimate relation between us, which has 
lasted more than half a century, but the qualities which 
I have known in him and which: have led me not only to 
respect and admire but to love him, must have shown 
themselves to many who will be present with you, and, 
beside this, I hardly dare trust myself to open a subject 
so full of memories which are among the greatest and 
most sacred treasures of my life. 



PRESIDENT ANGELL 



I beg to express my thanks for the invitation to be 
present at the meeting in commemoration of President 
Oilman, on November 8th. I regret that my engagements 
render it impossible for me to accept. I should be glad to 



40 Daniel Coit Gihnan [1156 

express, by my presence, my great personal regard for 
him and my high; appreciation of the great value of his 
services to higher education in this country. 



PRESIDENT ALDERMAN 

Permit me to thank you for remembering me in extend- 
ing the invitation to be present at the meeting in com- 
memoration of Dr. Gilnian, on November 8th. I regret 
that it is not possible for me to be present, for I assure 
you that my spirit is in thorough sympathy with the 
purposes of the meeting. It was my fortune to know 
Dr. Gilman well for the last eight or ten years, and, of 
course, I knew, as a student, of his service to American 
education, and especially the tremendous service he per- 
formed in the building of Johns Hopkins University. No 
American who has worked in the field of education has a 
clearer title to just and honest fame. 



PRESIDENT JUDSON 

The University of Chicago feels acutely the great work 
which; President Gilman did in the founding of Johns 
Hopkins University. American universities, to-day, owe 
a large part of their advanced ideas and of their achieve- 
ments in the line of real university work to the founda- 
tion and example of -Johns Hopkins. President Gilman's 
memory will be enshrined in the history of American uni- 
versities for all time. 



DR. S. WEIR MITCHELL 



I cannot let pass the formal invitation to the commemo- 
ration service for Dr. Gilman without a word of regret 
on my part that I cannot be present. I have just arrived 
at home and am overwhelmed with correspondence and 



1157] Letters Received 41 

engagements, and have also to be in Baltimore later in 
the month at the meeting of the National Academy of 
Sciences. 

We must, all of us, deeply regret the passing away of 
this estimable and accomplished gentleman, who has done 
so much for education and, indirectly, for the science of 
the country. 



HONORABLE SETH LOW 

I regret very much that it is not possible for me to be 
present at the meeting in commemoration of Dr. Oilman, 
to be held on Sunday next. My friendship for him as a 
man and my appreciation of his work both urge me to 
attend; but, unfortunately, circumstances forbid. 

I avail myself of this opportunity, however, to say that, 
in my judgment, Dr. Oilman's influence upon the higher 
education in the United States was so fruitful that he 
will be permanently remembered as one of America's 
greatest educators. It was said of Augustus that he 
found Eome brick and left it of marble. With equal 
truth, it may be said of Dr. Oilman that he found the 
United States a land of colleges that gave to men a 
broadening education, and he left it a land of universities, 
also, that train specialists as well as they can be trained 
anywhere in the world, in every department of human 
knov.iedge. This was a gift to the United States sur- 
passing, in its possibilities of benediction, all the treas- 
ures at the command of Aladdin's lamp. The American 
people may well do honor to such a man, while we 
who knew and loved him will bear his name inscribed 
upon our hearts. 



PRESIDENT QUIRK 

I beg leave to offer to you as President of the University 
and friend of Dr. Oilman, lately deceased, my sincere 
expression of sympathy and sorrow. In view of the 



42 Daniel Coit Gilman [1158 

Doctor's advanced age it was but natural that his end 
might be expected at any time; yet such was his bright 
and buoyant carriage that one would not readily associate 
with him the idea of death and parting. It is for me a 
source of pleasure and satisfaction to express to you as 
head of Hopkins Universitj^, of which Dr. Gilman was the 
first president and organizer, the deep appreciation which 
I have always entertained of his courtesy and kindnesses 
extended to me while at Loyola, in Baltimore. His large- 
mindedness, his power of organization, and his keen 
scrutiny into character have been qualities generally 
extolled in the public press. Yet I dare say that you will 
agree with me when I affirm that his finest qualities were 
that broad and impartial judgment which made him, so to 
speak, catholic in his view of men and things, and that 
courtliness of manner which was the constant, outward 
reflection of that judgment. 

I am sure that this brief word of condolence will meet 
with a kind reception on the part of one who knew him 
so intimately as yourself, and who could therefore appre- 
ciate his great worth as a friend and educator. 



1159] Dr. FranJclin's Tribute 43 



ARTICLE IN "THE NATION," OCTOBER 22, 1908 
Dr. FABIAN FRANKLIN 

The great achievement with which the name of Presi- 
dent Gilman will always be chiefly associated is that of 
having naturalized in America the idea of a true univer- 
sity. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to point to 
any other instance in which a fundamental advance in the 
aims of the higher education in a great nation has been so 
clearly identified with the work of one man. To say this 
is not to claim for Mr. Gilman any great originality of 
conception, on the one hand, or, on the other hand, any 
monopoly in the work of shafting the methods by which 
the ideas underlying the creation of the Johns Hopkins 
University were brought into definite and concrete form. 
It is perfectly true that the time was ripe for the great 
forward step that was taken in Baltimore in 1876 ; vague 
aspirations in that direction existed in a number of places, 
and fragmentary efforts toward higher university work 
were made here and there, by some exceptionally gifted or 
exceptionally equipped professor in one or another of our 
leading institutions of learning. But there is no telling 
how long a time the actual ripening might have required 
if it had been left to the gradual increase of these sporadic 
efforts, which had no systematic support, and which were 
not even recognized, by any but the merest handful of men, 
as pointing toward any broad or significant result. The 
first great merit of President Gilman was that, from the 
moment that he was called to Baltimore, the object which 
he s-et before himself was that of making the institution 
which was to arise there under his guidance a means of 
supplying to the nation intellectual training of a higher 
order than could be obtained at existing colleges and uni- 



44 Daniel Goit Gihnan [1160 

versities, and thus distinctly raising the standards of 
American science and scholarship. The wisdom of Johns 
Hopkins in placing no restrictions on the discretion of 
his trustees, and the intelligence and broadmindedness of 
the trustees themselves, gave President Gilman a rare and 
enviable opportunity to carry out this high purpose; but 
it must not be forgotten that, in the practical execution 
of such a task, there arise a thousand difficulties, tempta- 
tions, and insidious dangers, any one of which may por- 
tend serious damage, and all of which, taken together, may 
mean utter failure. To be firm against local prejudices 
or desires when in conflict with; the great end in view; to 
be uninfluenced by personal claims and unafraid of tempo- 
rary complainings; to disappoint the natural hopes of 
those who were anxious to see imposing buildings and big 
crowds of students, and to await the recognition which 
attends the genuine achievement of a vital but not super- 
ficially showy result — these are things that look easy in 
the retrospect, but that did not seem by any means mat- 
ters of course before the event. 

As to the actual methods adopted in the inception of the 
Johns Hopkins University, it would be an error to attrib- 
ute them to the unaided initiative of President Gilman. 
He felt his way ; he had at his side, in the original group 
of six professors, men vt^ho were not only eminent scholars, 
investigators, and teachers, but able advisers. Three were 
American and three English ; and of the three Americans, 
two had been thoroughly imbued with the methods of the 
German universities in which they had been trained. It 
was, of course, in the main, the adoption of German uni- 
versity standards and methods that characterized the new 
university at Baltimore, and differentiated it from any- 
thing that had theretofore existed in America; and in 
determining just how far to go in this direction the views 
of tw^o such men as Gildersleeve and Remsen were natu- 
rally of the utmost value and influence. Anything like an 



1161] Br. Franklin's Trihute 45 

exact imitation of the German university was not 
attempted; but the conclusion was soon arrived at that 
the German doctorate of philosophy must be set up as the 
fixed goal of students, and that the German Seminar must 
be one of the chief instruments of instruction. That 
before receiving the university degree the candidate must 
have shovv^n the training of an investigator in his chief 
subject, as well as the acquisition of a certain amount of 
specialized knowledge, was thus fundamental in the Johns 
Hopkins plan from the beginning ; it need hardly be added 
that, as a matter of course, productive research was, 
generally speaking, understood to be an indispensable part 
of the activities of the professorial body. That the com- 
bination of the work of research with the work of teaching 
was a cardinal part of President Gilman's programme 
from the outset, is evident from his inaugural address 
delivered February 22, 1876, half a year before the univer- 
sity was opened ; and the promptness with which the uni- 
versity began the publication of the American Journal of 
Mathematics, the American Chemical Journal, and the 
American Journal of Philology gave evidence of the prom- 
inence, in President Gilman's mind, of the idea of furnish- 
ing all necessary facilities and encouragements for the 
prosecution of research. 

The project of establishing twenty fellowships, to be 
held for a period of from one to three years by young men 
of good attainments and of unusual promise, had been 
adopted by Mr. Gilman before he had gathered his pro- 
fessors together, and it proved to be a factor of the first 
importance in the creation of that inspiriting atmosphere 
which distinguished the early years of the Johns Hopkins, 
and which all who shared in the labors and the enthusi- 
asms of that time cherish among the brightest memories 
of their lives. The fellowship and scholarship method of 
attracting students has, in the past thirty years, spread to 
great dimensions in our country, with results that are not 



46 Daniel Coit Gilma/n [1162 

without their objectionable side; but neither at the Johns 
Hopkins nor elsewhere is the idea of the fellowship now 
what it was when Mr. Gilmian gathered in the aspiring 
young men who held the Johns Hopkins fellowships in the 
first few years. It may be somewhat difficult to point out 
the exact difference; but perhaps this may best be indi- 
cated by saying that the Johns Hopkins fellowship in 
those days did not seem a routine matter, an every-day 
step in the regular process toward a doctorate or a pro- 
fessorship, but a rare and peculiar opportunity for study 
and research, eagerly seized by men who had been hunger- 
ing and thirsting for such a possibility. Of course, not 
every one of the twenty was a rara avis, nor was every one 
equally enthusiastic. But, on the whole, here was a little 
phalanx of gifted and ardent young men gathered from 
every quarter of the country, some of them fresh from 
study in Germany, and nearly all filled with the idea that 
a new world was opening out for American learning and 
that they were the first to be admitted to the privilege of 
entering upon its intellectual joys. At least one member 
of the first band of fellov/s, a man who has reached the 
highest distinction as a philosophical thinker and writer — 
Professor Royce — some years ago recorded in a charming 
way his recollections of those inspiring days, and what he 
says about them is no more than those who were his con- 
temporaries at Johns Hopkins will recognize as true. 

Among the qualities of President Gilman to which the 
splendid success o^ ^he young university was due, none is 
more frequently or more justly pointed to than his rare 
talent in the choice of men. With the small faculty with 
which the work was begun, it was of essential importance 
that every appointment, or nearly every appointment, 
should be of pre-eminent excellence ; and such was the case. 
Moreover, the qualities of the various professors — their 
temperament, their predilections, their methods, their 
origin and antecedents — were extremely diverse; and it 



1163] Dr. Franklin's Tribute 47 

was in a measure this very diversity that gave Johns Hop- 
kins that peculiarly intense and picturesque vitality that 
was so marked in its early years. It would never in the 
world have done to have a whole faculty of Sylvesters; 
anything like a systematic programme would have been 
out of the question, and still more out of the question 
would have been the carrying out of any programme 
whatever. But, on the other hand, the presence of one 
Sylvester was of absolutely incalculable value. Not only 
did he fire the zeal of the young men who came for mathe- 
matics, but the contagion of his intellectual ardor was 
felt in every department of the university, and did more 
than any other one thing to quicken that spirit of ideal- 
istic devotion to the pursuit of truth and the enlargement 
of knowledge which is, after all, the very soul of a univer- 
sity. It was one of the finest traits of President Oilman 
that he not only appreciated qualities like Sylvester's 
sufficiently to lead him to select such a man in the first 
place, but — what is far more noteworthy — was capable of 
such genuine sympathy with him, such, participation in 
his aims and enthusiasms, as to overcome all the barriers 
and difficulties and vexations that necessarily attended 
dealings with a man having in so extraordinary a measure 
the trying temperamental peculiarities that are the privi- 
lege of genius. It was not only in the selection of men, 
but in dealing with them, that Oilman showed the gifts 
of a remarkable administrator. Nor does this adequately 
express the source of his hold on his colleagues, for that 
was due not merely to skill or sagacity, but also to the 
really extraordinary breadth of his interests. There was 
nothing great, nothing significant in any field of efifort, 
that failed to appeal to his imagination and to arouse in 
him the keen interest of a man who?e mind was ever open 
to the possibilities of achievement and to the promotion 
of culture in all its forms. 



48 Daniel Coit Gilinan [1164 

Mr. Giiman's career did not begin with the foundation 
of the Johns Hopkins University, and did not end with 
his retirement from its presidency after twenty-live years 
of service. Nor was his activity during that twenty-five 
years confined to his university work. He took an impor- 
tant and sometimes a leading part in every movement for 
educational and social betterment in Baltimore; he was 
selected by President Cleveland as a member of the Vene- 
zuela Boundary Commission, and effectively applied his 
skill as a geographier and his talent for the organization 
of a complex work to the task of that body ; he succeeded 
Carl Schurz as president of the National Civil Service 
Eeform League; he took an active and important part in 
the administration of the Peabody Fund, the Slater Fund, 
and the General Educational Fund. Before the Johns 
Hopkins days, he had done fine work at Yale, especially 
in the development of the Sheffield Scientific School ; and 
his acceptance of the presidency of the University of Cali- 
fornia resulted in its almost immediate transformation 
from an insignificant to an important institution. He 
edited the works of Francis Lieber and wrote a life of 
James Monroe and a number of papers on subjects con- 
nected with education and with government. After his 
resignation from Johns Hopkins, he became the first presi- 
dent of the Carnegie Institution, and continued at that 
post during the years in w^hich its work was taking shape. 

But, after all, the central fact of his life, and that which 
gives it genuine historical importance, was the formation 
of the Johns Hopkins University. From this event will 
always be dated the raising of America's chief institu- 
tions of learning to the jilane of real universities, and 
indeed the beginning, in our country, of productive intel- 
lectual activity on a large scale in the higher fields of 
research. If anybody is inclined to think that there was 
nothing but coincidence in this — that it was only a matter 
of the time and the money coming fortunately together — 



1165] Dr. Franldiii's Tribute 49 

it is worth while to call his attention to the way in which 
history repeated itself, when, seventeen years after the 
foundation of the university, the gift of the moderate sum 
of half a million dollars, by Miss Garrett and others, 
rendered possible the opening of the Johns Hopkins Medi- 
cal School. It was not an accident that such men as 
Welch and Osier — not to mention others — were found for 
the work then undertaken ; it was not an accident that the 
result of that work was such as was characterized by Pres- 
ident Eliot when he spoke of "the prodigious advancement 
of medical teaching which has resulted from the labors 
of the Johns Hopkins faculty of medicine." However 
ripe the time may have been, it awaited the awakening 
touch of the right men, set on the right track, encouraged 
and aided to do the right thing, before the result was 
accomplished. President Gilman was, all his life, a centre 
of hopeful and creative effort ; he had a genuine love for 
large and useful achievement, and he had both the stead- 
fastness of purpose and the clearness of judgment neces- 
sary to the realization of such achievement ; he took a keen 
interest in those who worked with him and those who 
worked under him ; he was quick to discern excellence of 
every kind, and eager to help its possessor to the best 
opportunities for the exercise of his powers; he filled 
every year of his long life with energetic and beneficent 
activity; he was kindly and generous; he never lowered 
the dignity of his office; and he leaves behind him a rare 
record of high and lasting service to his country and to 
the cause of learning:. 



50 Daniel Goit Oilman [1166 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
Mr. WILLIAM C. OILMAN 

OF NORWICH, CONN. 

Daniel Coit Gilman was born in Norwich, Connecticut, 
July 6, 1831. His father, William Charles Gilman, 
born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in 1795, spent his youth 
in Boston, and in 1816, at the age of twenty-one, made 
his residence in Norwich, where he married, in 1820, Eliza 
Coit, born in 1796 and daughter of Daniel Lathrop and 
Elizabeth (Bill) Coit. He was the fifth in a family of 
nine children, eight of whom lived to maturity. 

He was connected in direct line of descent with many 
well-known New England families, of whom the first 
representatives came to this country between 1620 and 
1638. Among them, besides Edward Gilman, the first of 
that name in America, -were the families of Clark, Coffin 
Dudley, Woodbridge, Perkins, Trueworthy, Coit, Abe! 
Adgate, Bill, Chandler, Gager, Huntington, and Lathrop 
all of English stock. 

In his early years he attended the Norwich: Academy 
where, among his instructors, w^ere Calvin Tracy, L 
Carey, S. L. Weld, and William Henry Huntington, some 
time of Paris. In his fourteenth year he removed with his 
father's family to the city of New York, where he con 
tinned his studies with his former instructor, Mr. Tracy 
and later prepared for college with Dr. John J 
Owen, editor of Greek and Latin text-books. He 
was also for a short time in the mercantile house of his 
father, where he acquired some practical knowledge of 
business. During these years, as indeed throughout his 
collegiate course, by teaching and by his ready pen he 
contributed not a little to his own support. In 1848, at 
the age of seventeen, he was admitted to Yale College and 
was graduated B. A. in 1852. His residence in New 



1167] Biographical Sketch 51 

Haven was in the family of his uncle, Professor James L. 
Kingsley, whose varied learning, accurate scholarship, 
and keen perceptions were stimulating and inspiring. 
In college he took a highly honorable position in scholar- 
ship, was president of the Linonian Society, one of the 
editors of the Yale Literary Magazine, a member of Delta 
Kappa, of Alpha Delta Phi, and of the Beethoven Society, 
the Atalanta Boat Club, of Skull and Bones, and of Phi 
Beta Kappa. In the year following his graduation he 
was engaged in private teaching and literary work in 
New Haven, continuing at the same time his own studies, 
and was entered for some months as a resident graduate 
at Harvard College, where his home was with Professor 
Arnold Guyot. In connection with S. Hastings Grant 
he became interested in the work of the New York Mer- 
cantile Library, and in Norton's Literary Gazette, which 
under their editorial direction commanded respect for 
its fair and independent criticism. As a result of their 
efforts the first annual convention of American Librarians 
was held in August, 1853. In December, 1853, he and 
his life-long friend, Andrew Dickson White, sailed for 
Europe as attaches of the American Legation at St. 
Petersburg, under Ex-Governor Thomas H. Seymour, 
minister-plenipotentiary. Pending the arrival of Gov- 
ernor Seymour, whom he preceded by a few weeks, he 
traveled in England, and when he was not yet twenty- 
three years old, under the auspices of Mr. Richard Cob- 
den and Mr. John Bright, at a large meeting of the 
National Public School Association at Manchester, he 
delivered a speech which was enthusiastically received, 
on "Common School Education in America." His con- 
nection with the legation at St. Petersburg afforded 
unusual facilities for observing the work of the great 
library and other institutions of learning, of technical 
schools, and reformatories, particularly for children, of 
the Imperial Court, and of the great fortifications at 
Cronstadt durinsr the French-English-Russian war. As 



52 Daniel Colt Gilman [1168 

a correspondent of the New York Journal of Commerce, 
the Independent, and the Tribune, and as an occasional 
contributor to other periodicals', his letters, before the 
days of ocean telegraphy, not only from Kussia, but also 
from Berlin some months later, when he was a student 
in the University, were interesting and instructive. Dur- 
ing his residence in Berlin he established lasting friend- 
ship with many distinguished scholars, among whom 
were Professor Pertz, the historian and royal librarian, 
and, in the department of physical and political geog- 
raphy in which he was specially interested, with the 
eminent Karl Bitter and F. Adolph Trendelenburg. In 
1855 he was appointed commissioner from the state of 
Connecticut to the Universal Exposition in Paris, where 
he became secretary of the board of associated commis- 
sioners. 

Returning to New Haven at the close of 1855, he wag 
made assistant librarian of Yale College in 1856, and 
becoming librarian in 1858 he held the position until 
he resigned in 1865. During this period he made a 
summer trip to Europe in 1857, delivered an oration at 
the bicentennial celebration at Norwich in 1859, was 
made acting school visitor of the city of New Haven, was 
secretary of the State Board of Education, was asso- 
ciated with the Hon, Henry Barnard in the publication 
of the Connecticut Common School Journal, and, co- 
operating with Professor Arnold Guyot, prepared a 
series of school geographies and maps. He was also a 
contributor to Appleton's American Encyclopaedia, un- 
der the editorship of Charles A. Dana, and, with Professor 
William D. Whitney and others, assisted Professor Noah 
Porter in the revision of Webster's Dictionary. 

After resigning the office of librarian in 1865, he de- 
voted himself more directly to his duties as professor of 
physical and political geography in the Sheffield Scien- 
tific School, to which office he had been appointed by the 



1169] Biographical Sketch 53 

corporation of Yale College in 18G3. Associated with 
Professor George J. Brush and others, he was efficient in 
extending and developing the work of the school of which 
he became practically the chief executive, securing for it 
large subscriptions for its permanent endowment, especi- 
ally in connection with the munificent gifts of Joseph E. 
Sheffield, and Oliver S. Winchester and the family of 
Mrs. Cornelia L. Hillhouse for an astronomical observa- 
tory. In 1870 he was elected president of the University 
of California, but declined the office, which, however, he 
assumed on his re-election in 1872. Continuing in that 
position for three years, he reorganized and greatly 
enlarged the work of the University, and was successful 
in establishing it on the firm foundation where it has 
continued to grow and prosper. 

Called to the presidency of the newly-founded Johns 
Hopkins University at Baltimore in 1875, before a brick 
or a stone had been laid or a teacher or student enrolled, 
he devoted himself heart and soul to its organization and 
upbuilding, and at the end of a quarter of a century 
resigned the office, leaving behind him in the University 
and in the Johns Hopkins Hospital, of which he was the 
first superintendent, and in the medical school of the 
University, enduring monuments of his genius as an 
organizer and administrator, of his inspiring influence 
with his colleagues and students as an educator, and of 
his wise discrimination in assembling a permanent staff 
of brilliant instructors, with eminent scholars and scien- 
tists of Europe and America as occasional lecturers. 
From the beginning his motto was "men before buildings." 

He was a frequent contributor to newspapers and 
periodicals relating to social science, civil service reform, 
charity organization, general education, and scientific 
research. He delivered many academic discourses, 
some of which were collected under the titles "University 
Problems" and "Launching of a University." 



54 Daniel Coit Gilman [1170 

He was the biographer of James Monroe, in the States- 
men's Series, and of Professor James D. Dana, of Yale 
College; was editor of the works of Dr. Francis Lieber 
and of Dr. Joseph P. Thompson, and of a new edition of 
De Tocqueville's "Democracy in America." He was a 
contribntor to Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia and was 
editor-in-chief of the New International Encyclopaedia. 
He was chairman of the Committee of Awards at the 
Atlanta Exposition of 1895. He rendered efficient serv- 
ice as a member of the Venezuelan Commission in 1896, 
under appointment by President Cleveland. In 1897 
he declined an invitation to the presidency of the Massa- 
chusetts Institute of Technology, and in 1898 declined 
President McKinley's invitation to serve on the Army 
Investigation Commission. He was president of the 
American Bible Society; president of the American 
Oriental Society; one of the commission to draft a char- 
ter for the city of Baltimore, especially in the sections 
of Education and Charities; president of the Civil Serv- 
ice Reform Association; president of the board of trus- 
tees of the John F. Slater Fund; vice-president of the 
Peabody Education Fund ; an incorporator of the General 
Education Board; was for three years president of the 
Carnegie Institution of Washington, and became later a 
trustee of the Russell Sage Foundation. He received the 
honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from Harvard Uni- 
versity and from St. John's College, Maryland, in 1876; 
from Columbia University in 1887; from Yale University 
and from the University of North Carolina in 1889 ; from 
Princeton in 1896; from the University of Toronto in 
1903; from the University of Wisconsin in 1904; from 
William and Mary College and from Clark University 
in 1905. 

In his multifarious and important duties he never 
sought political preferment, personal fame, or pecuniary 
reward, but through a life of great activity "held his rud- 



1171] Biographical Sketch 55 

der true," with an unswerving purpose to acquire and 
impart useful knowledge, and by bis voice and pen and 
personal influence to realize tbe hopes of his youth in 
promoting and advancing sound education in all depart- 
ments, from primary and technical schools to the highest 
institutions of learning. 

Between 1853 and 1908 he made ten voyages to Europe, 
extending his travels to Algiers, Egypt, and Jerusalem. 
The summer of 1908 was spent for the most part in 
Southern Europe. He returned on October 7, seemingly 
in improved health, and after brief visits to his daughter 
and to relatives in Newport he went to the home of his 
sisters in Norwich, Connecticut, where he died suddenly 
on Tuesday afternoon, October 13, 1908. 

He married in 1861 Mary Ketcham, daughter of Tred- 
well Ketcham, of New York. She died in 1869, leaving 
two daughters, who survive their father. 

In 1877 he married Elizabeth Dwight Woolsey, daugh- 
ter of John M. Woolsey, of Cleveland, Ohio, and niece of 
President Theodore Dwight Woolsey, of Yale University. 

His domestic relations were of the happiest, and during 
his long official career the liberal and gracious hospital- 
ity of his household to all sorts and conditions of men, 
from youthful students to eminent scholars of world- 
wide distinction, contributed not a little to the promo- 
tion of the interests which were dear to his heart. 



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